Is it just me….

Or has the whole word gone mad!!

Or at least the 18 year old boys…men…boys….young men…heck I don’t know! They’re technically adults by the numbers but acting like large children so it’s hard to put a title on them. Ya know??

Since my own freshly minted 18 year old has come of age and take life by the horns, I’ve been chatting with other mommas. Funnily enough, I’m not the only mom I know struggling to understand just what is going on in the mind of our new adult children. What thoughts run across their minds in the crazy decisions they settle on. What sort of processing systems are the using. Is all of the brain engaged or only a small portion?

I don’t say this to be mean. I love my kid tremendously! Always will. He may have hurt me and his dad and broken his little sisters heart, but I’d still burn the world down for him. But, I have questions. And other moms I know seem to be wondering the same things about their kids.

You see, I get it. In all of the conversations I’ve had lately, there’s a common thread. We moms wonder what the heck did we do that steered them down these crazy paths. We’ve loved them, cared for them, tried to guide them, and stood up for them. Where there were lessons to be learned, we tried our best to make sure they were learned and hoped they stuck. Then the 18th birthday rolls around and BAM! we get hit with a truck load of ‘what the heck!’ I’ve spent the last six week trying to fully wrap my head around my kid’s decisions. Want to know what I’ve discovered?

His decisions are his decisions. He will have to live with his choices. WOW! Let me tell you, those are some hard things to reconcile as a mom. I’ve spent years taking care of him, leading him, guiding him, helping him. Suddenly, I’m cut off at the knees and left flopping around like a fish out of water, gasping for air.

It hurts that he won’t trust me with the truth of what’s going on in his life. Guess he forgot I do better work than the FBI/CIA/NSA combined and that people love him and will fill in the gaping holes in his stories. But I will always hold on to hope.

Hope that my kid will stop crafting stories and trust his dad and me with the truth. Hope that he will make a whole hearted effort to make amends with his baby sister. How that he will remember we love him unconditionally and always will. Some think me crazy for it but I don’t care. Hope springs eternal and I will always have room for it.